NEW TOY

Just bought a new gadget...

A blood-red, four cycle Honda 25 cc engine grass cutter...

Those bamboo-like grasses at the slopes... they spread like wildfire...

But, didn't want to use chemicals to kill them...

Like the hair in my receding forehead, the grass in the slopes needs some occasional 'haircut'...

So, yours truly shall be busy cutting the grass perhaps once in two weeks...

Hard work, that is...

Meanwhile in the garden, the calabash (actually, just looked this word up in the dictionary) aka bottle gourds are forming beautifully...

The cucumbers are crunchy and the mini tomatoes, plentiful and sweet...

The loofah (again, just looked this one up in the dictionary too) aka sponge gourds dangle from the bamboo poles but the basil plants (my favorite spice) are still rather small...

The carpenters just fixed our new oriel (again, this one too) or bay window that protrudes outwards from the wall...

We look forward to enjoying the views of the sea from this window soon...

Weather-wise, the continuous heavy rains filled up our pond to the brim...

Hope the goldfishes will not jump out of the pond and commit suicide...

FEELING WONDERFUL

Feeling at ease and at peace with myself...

Life is wonderful...

The temperatures shot up to 34 degrees today...

And I thought it was only yesterday that I was shivering in the cold, cycling home from work...

Japanese universities throughout the country are in the midst of experimenting a simultaneous one-week holiday in mid August...

Japanese folks are not inclined to take 'long' holidays, so the universities are like, forcing them to stay away from the work place, at least for one week...

Mid August is O-bon season, a time when the local folks return to their ancestral homes to pay respect to their ancestors...

This experiment could only mean more traffic jams during the O-bon...

Now, I would be locked out of the university for one week as well... and what should I be doing then?

I suppose, swimming and frolicking at the beach near our house...

And, perhaps, even some fishing... heeeeeaaaa...

EATING GOLD

Yeap, literally... that is...

Was offered this bowl of 'kinpaku udon' by a close friend at a local festival the other day...

Kimpaku as in gold flakes... udon as in noodles...

The taste?

Excellent, no doubt...

THE OTHER SIDE OF 'PARADISE'

One of the most enjoyable dives I have ever had were at the house reefs of the Sipadan Water Village in Mabul Island...

The two house reefs were aptly called Paradise One and Paradise Two...

In the tongue of the fellow Japanese divers, ParaOne and ParaTwo...

The morning dives opened the window to sleepy and lethargic fishes... excellent for photo shoots...

The evening dives lent the opportunity to witness the exquisite Mandarinfish...

***** ***** *****

Way back one weekend in the summer of 1987, I was laying on my futon as the morning Hiroshima sun shone on my face...

I didn't have the urge to crawl out from my warm futon...

Why, when it was the illustrious Eighth of July... my B-;-day... hehehe...

Just then, I felt something crawled on my neck...

I practically rocketed myself out of the futon when I realized that it was a centipede...

Immediately, I used my pillow to clamp it down...

With the Swiss knife nearby, I killed that fellow without a second thought...

It was about 10 centimeters long...

After a while, an odd feeling crept onto me: perhaps one of my ancestors came to wish me 'yappy b-day'?

But no, my ancestors cannot be that stupid to come in the form of a 'killer' centipede...

I put out the challenge, verbally, that if it was really one of my ancestors, please come in another less threatening form...

Moments later, I saw a baby mantis crawling on the window pane...

My eyes widened and my jaw dropped...

***** ***** *****

Fast-forward nineteen years to two-zero-zero-six...

Location: Aji-town... Takamatsu city... Kagawa prefecture... Nipponland...

About two months ago, moments after I laid on my futon to snore, I felt something gnawing at my thinning scalp...

I slapped my scalp, and just in case, I put on the lights...

Man, a centipede!

I immediately got hold of the guy, have it put inside a plastic bag and disposed it in the hills the following day...

Some nights later, it was the turn of my missus to be 'attacked'...

We wondered how in the world those centipedes could find their way into our second floor bedroom...

And two nights ago, as I closed the window before hitting the sack, I saw another centipede two meters away from my futon...

Yeeeaaaarrrggghh...

Could it be that my 'ancestors' are really that persistent and dim-witted?

'Paradise', our place might be...

But poisonous snakes and venomous centipedes there are... to keep our nerves on ends...

Anyway, it feels great to turn Portee-Eight years young todaaay...

Heeeeaaa...

KERMITS GALORE, GOLDFISHES EATEN?

What a pleasure to see the little green kermits, with their equally little 'coattails', come out of the water to sit on top of the water lily leaves...

They rest on the leaftops for a while, acclimatizing themselves to the new 'air' environment...

Before long, they go a-hopping around the garden...

Meanwhile, my missus reported to me that she has seen snakes prowling in our pond...

Four different occasions on four different days...

And, usually around three in the afternoon...

By her description of their lengths and sizes, there is more than one...

The patterns on the snakes apparently suggest that they are 'mamushi' (Japanese Copperhead)...

Poisonous snakes, that is...

Yeeee...

And, for the past few days, we have not seen our three goldfishes...

Oh dear... have the copperheads had them for snacks?

Oh... my kawaii kingyo-chan...

Where are you??

SOME HICCUPS, BUT ALL SYSTEMS GO

Took the 'ningen-doc' medical examination for the eleventh straight year...

Thank the graceful god... almost all indicators showed the green light...

Of course, barring the perennially weakening eye power which is surely going out through the window...

The blood composition indexes (still can't understand those unreadable jargons) remain a little haywire, as have been for as long as I started the medical examinations...

For one thing, I remain a little short of that 'Fe' iron thingy... somewhat anemic, that is... must up my consumption of spinach?

My height also shrunk by 0.6 centimeters, to the current 175.4 centimeters... should I take up high jump, I wonder...

Blood pressure ranges from a low of 62 to a high of 102... not too bad...

And, phew... body fat declined from last year's 16.5% to 14.7%... (Recommended range for men is from 14% to 23%)...

Must be due to the rather heavy duty cycling over the hills to work...